Where The Next Door Opened
by albertpops
Summary: Directly after Dulvey, Ethan and Mia try to resume their life together. Their optimistic views are slowly undermined by the difficulties of adjusting back to civilian life, and the ghosts of the Incident resurface.
1. August

The fit of their wedding bands hadn't changed, but it took longer than expected to adjust to the new weight and scuffed shine of their old rings. Both had sat dustless at the bottom of Mia's jewelry box and they now glinted like children begging for attention.

Mia twisted hers absently as the stone set in the center flashed rhythmically in the clinical fluorescent lighting of the waiting room. It clinked quietly against the stacked engagement ring. Personnel murmured and shuffled papers distantly. A blanket of silence covered them like the temporary deafness that follows a gunshot, so dull and muffled it could induce claustrophobia.

"I'm surprised you kept yours," Ethan confessed. His voice sounded low through the din of her thoughts. "I thought Eveline had made you take it off or something. Or it had fallen off with the shipwreck."

Mia shook her head. "It was to protect you, really. I didn't want anyone using it for leverage. The Connections was a dirty game to play and I didn't want any competitor to target you. Blackmail me to get to Evie." She twisted her mouth to the side and gave an embarrassed chuckle. "So much for that, though, keeping you away? I never did thank you for coming to get me."

"Sure. You're my wife, Mia." He took her hand and laced their fingers together warmly. "You know I'd do anything for you."

She looked to his face and smiled before watching the gentle strokes of her thumb over the back of his hand. "I was so scared you'd given up on me." She laughed with a nervous plinking, like a trilling of notes on a piano. "I was so scared you'd hate me after everything. I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"Come on, I could never hate you. I hated what happened to you, and who did it." He looked at her face but she didn't meet his eye, drumming her fingers with a pensive, nervous tick. "You were a victim in a huge corporate game," he continued, "but that's over now. Let's just work on moving forward."

Mia nodded, as a smile spread timidly on her face. "Okay," she agreed. "Thank you, Ethan. Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve you."

He smiled with a released breath, but before he could form the words to answer, a door opened, and a nurse dressed in solid blue scrubs balanced a clipboard on her hip. "Mia Winters?" she called. "Come on back."

Mia turned her head at the sound of her name. "I'll see you later, baby," She kissed his cheek and a smiled lingered in the light of her eyes. "I'll meet you in the car afterward."

"Sure," he concurred, as she tucked her loose dark hair behind her ear and gathered her things. "Good luck, babe."

She blew a kiss to him, then followed the nurse back behind the door to the examination rooms. The door closed, and she was out of sight. A different silence swelled in her absence. The clock on the wall ticked gratingly and as he twisted the ring he'd never thought he'd wear again. He blew an impatient sigh so his cheeks puffed out. An anxiety buzzed within him as if his blood had been electrified. Even without speaking, Mia's presence had been comforting. The anticipation of a medical exam began to feel more like a test he hadn't studied for. Failure meant the worst, and he had himself and Mia to think about. A swirling of what-ifs polluted his mind. What if the virus was still active? What if he lost Mia to Blue Umbrella research? Sure, this was the beginning of their new life together, but what if that new life led them someplace dark?

"Ethan Winters?" He jumped, and the nurse acquired a more apologetic tone to his voice when he announced,"We're ready for you."

His heart rate didn't slow as he followed the nurse back to one of the many rooms along the hallway in the back. "Right in here, please," the nurse gestured. "I'll be back in one moment."

Ethan hesitantly lifted himself up onto the examination chair and looked around the room. The paper underneath him snickered as he shifted his weight and tried to ease his nerves and simmer his racing thoughts. A jar of cotton balls sat non threateningly by the sink, until Marguerite's mutated form corrupted their likeness to sacks of insect eggs. The gauze was fine until it reminded him of the white veins of calcified mold. There was nothing offensive about the tongue depressors, so he kept his eyes on them, counting them, until the nurse came back into the room.

"How do you feel today, Mr. Winters?" he asked politely.

"Fine," Ethan answered. "Glad that this is the last visit for a while. Feels like Mia and I have been in and out of here constantly since Dulvey."

"Glad to hear you're doing well. We've definitely been thorough with the case of you and your wife," he said pleasantly. "You've been responding well to the tests so far." He switched on a light board and began to hang up black and white scans. "Your MRIs came back as expected."

"Let me guess," Ethan said dryly, looking to images that wordlessly defined pathophysiology. "No good news?"

The nurse maintained a professional face. "There's still ample E-series matter in your biomass," he said, and gestured to a few dark blotches on the film. "It should be benign considering E-001's termination. We've got Alpha and Charlie teams investigating the scene as we speak to ensure the virus doesn't spread. If their report comes in continuity with yours, then we won't need to run any further tests. Until then, we'd like a blood sample to pair with your scans, so if anything should change we have you on file."

"Sure," he agreed. "Makes sense."

The track marks from the steroids still freckled his arm, and the white line and dots on his wrist textured his skin like road paint. He rolled up his sleeve while the nurse prepared the needle and the vacuum sealed test tube. All the scars that newly decorated him settled into his skin with a dull ache, but the initial pain was lost. He couldn't conjure the pain of the slashes from the molded monsters, or the crunch of his nose under Jack's boot, or the chainsaw tearing through the bones and ligaments in his wrist. He leaned back at the nurses instruction and a vapid, clinical, sterile smell filled the room and cooled the crux of his elbow. He could relive everything: the darkness of the house, feeling the rough splintered surfaces to navigate, while Jack's high-pitched laugh shrieked through the growling of the vibrating walls. The wet smell of rot and blood permeating through the house and the redolent taste of the Baker's supper indelibly stood out. He didn't blink when the needle bit into his veins. There it was: fresh pain. It didn't dredge any memory from the depths. It only paled to something insignificant, amongst a recollection he had no access to. He watched the blood stain the flexible rubber tube, ooze down the vessel, and darken from crimson to maroon to near black. At least it hadn't come out black, he thought, as the meniscus of his blood crawled steadily higher. He wondered if it would take long to heal the needle into his arm, and if it was already too late.

"Okay," the nurse said, pressing gauze over the sunken needle and withdrawing it at an angle that tugged playfully at his skin. "That should be all we need from you today. Do you have any questions?"

"Yeah," he answered distantly as a box labelled "biohazard" was opened, and the used needle discarded. He traced the symbol over in his mind, the grand tapering arcs that came so close to connecting, like three pairs of razor pincers emerging from the inner circle, a common space from which these teeth scoured for flesh. From which boxcutter claws swept for a clean kill. From which mutilated bodies spilled from their cooled morgues and rose, inked and corrupted.

"Okay," the nurse prompted. "Ask away."

Ethan blinked the gruesome visions from his mind's eye. "Yeah," he started, "sorry, yeah. You mentioned that if Blue Umbrella's report comes in continuity with my testimony then there's no need to do further tests."

"That's correct, yes." The nurse checked under the gauze and retrieved a roll of medical tape.

"What if it doesn't come back the same?"

"Then we'll do our best and handle your case as well as we can. One of the missions for Alpha and Charlie is to retrieve samples of the E-series so that an antidote serum can be made. You and your wife will receive the serum as soon as its created just for good measure." The tape pressed the gauze into the new bruise, the small puncture wound already clotting. "Full contamination takes about two weeks. You haven't had any episodes since extraction, have you?"

Ethan shrugged with a confused resignation. "I can't tell what's a hallucination or, I don't know, PTS memory. I know full infection takes two weeks, but," he searched for the words. "I feel like my symptoms escalated so quickly over the course of the night. I don't want to turn into the same things the Bakers' did. I've been having these nightmares."

"That would be common following an experience such as yours."

"Yeah, but they're not unsimilar to the one I saw on the ship." He laughed with a kind of nervous disbelief. "I know it's gonna sound crazy, but I feel like they're trying to tell me something."

The nurse tipped his head and picked up a clipboard on the desk beside him. "What do you think they're telling you?"

"I don't know," he muttered. "It's like… it's like when you're standing on a high ledge and you get the impulse to jump. It's like something in me that's not me."

"What's it telling you?" he pressed.

Ethan pursed his lips. The words he kept in his mouth left a bitter taste, until the pungence became too potent and he confessed, "that I should go back. Well, not that I should. That I want to."

The nurse nodded in professional understanding and clicked the pen at the top of the clipboard. The ball of the pen scratched woodenly at the paper pinned to the stiff backing. "We were going to prescribe this to you anyway," he began. "Considering your experience and circumstance, Blue Umbrella thinks it prudent to put you in a few sessions of mandatory counselling. It'll be a good space to get a more in-depth look at this phenomena you've been experiencing." He handed Ethan the paper he had written upon. "Is there anything else you'd like to ask?"

Ethan read over the slip slowly a few times, then looked back up to the nurse. "Nothing I can't run past a shrink," he said icily, with a cordial smile.

"In that case you're all set," the nurse replied neutrally. "Here's a copy of the procedures done today. You can check out at the front desk."

His mind was so crowded with a mix of thoughts all running into each other that he hardly remembered interacting with the receptionist. He left the facility in an absent daze, walked out the parking lot, and shut the car door a little too hard. Mia jumped and put her hand to her sternum. "Jesus, you scared me."

"Sorry," he sighed through his teeth.

A look of worry crossed her face and she tipped her head and tried to read his expression. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," he dismissed, twisting the key in the ignition. "Remember what I said about moving forward? Talking about what happened just puts me on edge."

"That's fine, I felt the same when I got out," she said. "No bad news, I hope?"

His veins felt like whining pipes fit to burst. His elbow ached stiffly where the tape and the clotting restricted his movement. "No," he said, and forced a quick smile to his face. He pulled the gauze off and watched the blood bead at the site, crawling down his forearm like a red leech that left a trail. He took a slow sigh, too gentle for Mia to hear, relieved that it hadn't healed instantly. He wondered if he could see the black flecks amongst the crimson, or if it had only stayed up in the creases of his brain. "Everything is fine," he answered finally. Mia smiled and the lines by her eyes crinkled. They spiderwebbed out from the sockets, and the sun on her face washed her complexion to a ghostly, haunted white.


	2. September

The coffee pot filled in slow, patient drips. Light brown beads glimmered in the temporally caught early morning light and sent ripples through the growing body behind the glass. It hissed and tapped so rhythmically it almost mesmerised. The news chattered absently from the next room over, uttering the day's horrors in casual monotones that still sounded loud even with the volume down. The real news sped silently along the bottom of the screen, inaudible, invisible.

Probably nothing to do with the Connections, or their exposed attempts at biological warfare. Local fire, local murder. The flavor of the news had gone bland weeks ago. A company as big and malicious as an underground weapons producer could afford to pay off their public relations. That's why only the Dulvey kidnappings merited national attention, while the hurricane swept away the Annabelle and all the suspicions it carried. However Blue Umbrella had found out about it, that was something he was still trying to figure out. The Annabelle compromised three years beforehand, the helicopters circling all night, and it took the guest house's mutated, virus-induced explosion to get boots on the ground. And even then, Blue Umbrella didn't take the killing shot.

Then again, Blue Umbrella did give them the cover to resume their civilian lives and avoid the legalities of it all. Ethan's service nullified Mia's. A little paperwork, and they were both off the hook.

The coffeemaker gave a final, sputtering hiss and its hypnosis ceased. Ethan blinked at the realisation that he had been wrapped up in thought. He poured a cup so dazedly it nearly overflowed and took a seat on the couch.

More fire, more murder. Sometimes he couldn't tell if he had become numb to it all just from the frequency, or if it simply paled in comparison to everything he'd seen. Sometimes it seemed that nothing was new or surprising. Everything to see had been seen, and an aggressive neutrality persisted so fervently. He hadn't yet found the remedy.

Mia came down the stairs with her hair in a messy bun, redolent of sleep. "Mornin, baby," she yawned.

"Morning," he replied, splitting his attention between her and the screen. "Coffee's on."

"Thanks." Her voice grew more distant as she rounded the turn into the kitchen. "You been up for long?

"Long enough," he called. A commercial flashed across the TV. The bleak realities of the breaking news blinked to a white-washed fantasy. The screen depicted an ideal that existed somewhere beyond the capabilities of the world, though impossible horrors had already been proven true.

A stretch of silence followed, interrupted by the delicate clinking of a spoon on ceramic and the familiar rattling of a plastic orange bottle. "Any nightmares?" she asked, swallowing the reminder that she'd poured into her palm.

"At this point I just-" _accept them_ didn't seem tasteful, even now. He tripped over the words in his mind before finally deciding on, "I don't know, it's getting bearable."

"Same old?"

"Same old," he sighed. "How's the job search going?"

She joined him in the den and took a seat on the couch, taking the first indulgent sips of her coffee. "It's all right, I have one that's looking really promising. Definitely not perfect, but I think it's a start. I'm still going to wait to withdraw the other applications, but," she shrugged. "It pays well and I'm qualified. Hopefully an interview will get lined up soon."

"That's great, Mia," he said warmly. "Honestly, I'm excited for you. You'll do great with the interview, they'll love you. And it'll be good to get back into a job and fill the days, make things feel more normal."

"This warm spell is bringing back a few things for me," she admitted. "Nothing an ambien later on won't help with, but all the same. It's hard to think of a time where I didn't need meds to get through a day. Sometimes I don't even know if it's real. Like it's too good, and my real self is stuck in a cocoon of mold somewhere, hallucinating it all."

"Believe me, I know the feeling." The tug slackened from the corner of his mouth and he dropped his eyes to the mug in his hands. Clouds of cream spun lazily in varying shades. Sometimes the nightmares felt more real than waking did. He tried to wash the thought out with a sip of coffee but the taste of the decaf only emphasized his point.

The phone rang, dismissing their thoughts with an outburst. Mia jumped and looked to the flashing landline like it was asking for her directly, and wiped the spilled coffee off her hands. Ethan reached over, and picked it up. "Hello?"

Mia looked at him with an imploring look in her eyes. "Is it the job?" she mouthed.

Ethan shrugged as he stood from the couch and set his coffee on the nearest table.

"Mr. Winters?" A digitized voice buzzed through the phone. "This is Chris Redfield, a liaison for Blue Umbrella."

"Redfield, sure." He gave Mia a look that offered an answer. She sat back and cradled her mug in both hands with no discernable reply. "I remember you. How are things?" He asked, as he turned and walked from the den to the privacy of another room.

"You know we were cleaning up the Baker property after you and your wife were extracted," he said plainly. "I'm actually calling in regards to that cleanup operation."

Helpful catchphrases circled his mind before the pang of catastrophe had hit: it's just an update, Dulvey's over, there's nothing left but the memory. Except no news is good news in these situations. Something must be wrong.

"Mr. Winters?"

He shook himself back into focus. "Yeah, I'm listening."

Redfield huffed a sigh like he didn't want to say what followed. "There's still a significant number of E-001a in the area-Molded, that is. We've lost a few operatives to the infection. I'll spare the details but those that report the symptoms, hallucinations, rapid healings, all that? They're the ones who go into the bayou and don't come back. You tracking so far?"

"Yeah," Ethan said slowly. "I hear you."

"It's something that shouldn't be happening after the extermination of E-001. We had a team investigate her remains and she's inactive as far as we can tell, but," he took a crackling, digitized breath. The minimal hesitation spoke volumes, "we believe that when her consciousness merged with the mold of the house, it also transferred into the E-001a, b, and c in the area."

"So what- she's still out there?" Ethan jumped. Every visceral detail flashed through his mind's eye, the spray of the molded's hot black spittle, the delirium of slowly losing his mind, the smell of blood and rot. He stuttered through the busted floodgate of memory. "Do I need to go back and stop her again? If this is a recruitment- Oh god, Mia and I haven't spread the infection, have we?"

"You and Mia will be fine." Redfield said patiently. "You received the E-series serums."

"And your operatives didn't?"

Redfield took a minute to let the anxious energy settle. "All we're asking from you is that you report to Blue Umbrella if you notice anything unusual. Hallucinations, auditory or visual. Rapid healing, bursts of violence. Even nightmares or a roach infestation. Give us a call or stop by, specialists will check it out. Got it?"

"Got it," he replied distantly. The past two weeks flashed through his head like a slow flipbook. He scanned each day, pulling the abnormal and the unusual from their skewed meanings. Nothing immediately came to mind besides the feeling that he was missing something.

"Good," Redfield confirmed with a noticeable doubt permeating his voice. "Either myself or another liaison will provide updates as the situation progresses. In the meantime, try to carry on with your civilian life."

"Okay," he concurred. "Thanks, Redfield."

"Sure. Pass the message along to your wife, too." The gears in Redfield's head spun in the small silence, before he said feelingly, "Take care, Mr. Winters."

"Thanks," he replied. "You too."

The line disconnected with a couple beeps, and Ethan walked the phone back to its place in the den. He placed one hand over his eyes and dragged it down his face before resuming his coffee beside Mia.

"What was that about?" Mia asked, looking at him over the the lip of her mug.

"Just…" he trailed off. "A friend, checking in. Nothing to worry about."

She smiled with tangible disbelief. "I wasn't worried until you told me I shouldn't be," she reasoned. "Really, Ethan, I want you to feel like you can trust me. What did she say?"

"He," Ethan corrected quietly, constructing his sentence slowly, "was from Blue Umbrella. Sent to Dulvey after we left. He just gave me a couple updates from the site."

Mia sat up and pulled her hair over one shoulder. "So?" she asked eagerly. "What did he say?"

Ethan took a sip of coffee as the conversation replayed in his mind. The thought of Eveline still being out there, even in a suppressed form, made his skin crawl. Each operative that turned carried a little piece of her in their biomass. He wondered if that made her stronger. She twisted herself into the Baker family like lymes disease, so not even the police reports could tell where they stopped and she began. Once someone is exposed to something, it's there forever.

Mia looked at him with a questioning expression. Her eyes held kindness and love and sometimes guilt, but never Eveline, not yet. Even if she had been in her head. Even if she was there forever. Ethan sighed something inevitable. "He said he's glad we got the E-series serum, and that Dulvey hasn't changed." He swirled the stippling of coffee grounds in the dregs of his mug. "And that everything is fine. There's nothing we should be worried about."


	3. October

Their sedan careened over the paved city roads with a speed that bordered on illegal. The buffering of the wind against the car windows suspended Mia's shocked and angry silence in white noise. She only broke it in sporadic phrases, like an internal alarm reminding her that "this is insane." Her eyes focused on the road, wide and cloudy. Her hands gripped the wheel and wrung the interior like a soggy washcloth. "This is insane."

"I had to be sure," he insisted through gritted teeth.

"This is insane," Mia said to herself, eyes fixated on something too distant to see. It was all she'd said for the past fifteen minutes. She gave a nervous chuckle and her eyes remained glassy. "This is insane."

"Mia, stop."

She shrugged. "This is insane."

Ethan gripped the dish towel tighter to his right arm. He bit his tongue to keep back the frustration and pain that welled inside him. He hardly had the energy to reason with her. The adrenaline was wearing off now. The dish towel grew heavier by the minute, until the blood that soaked it dripped thickly on his untucked shirttails.

"This is insane," she muttered again, buzzing past her lips and hiding under the white noise. "This is-"

"I know!" he snapped. "Jesus, I know, all right? You don't have to keep saying it."

"What happened, Ethan?" The question fell out like a demand. "For weeks everything is okay. Normal, even. Then I find you with a knife in your arm-" her voice broke into a higher register and she let the tension go in a micromanaged sigh.

Ethan waited for her nerves to settle before slowly stating "it was an accident."

"It _wasn't_," she retorted abruptly, pumping the brake a little too hard as the light in at the intersection turned red. She adjusted her hands on the wheel and pushed her eyebrows up, speaking with a profound resignation: "I just want the truth. I can't apologize forever."

His voice was low like tires rolling slowly over gravel. "You don't have to."

A pause as long as a heartbeat. "Then why don't you talk to me?"

"I _do_."

"Then explain!" She erupted. "I'm not stupid, Ethan! You've been hiding something since we restarted together and I'm tired of waiting around until you say it!"

Cars buzzed past the window as the light turned green and Mia lurched the car forward with the same fervor with which she had stopped it. The windshield-shaped square of sunlight turned lazily across their laps, warming their jeans despite the raging AC.

"It was an accident," Ethan resumed, a twinge of embarrassment coloring the iteration.

A protest rose in Mia's conduct.

"I didn't mean for it to go so deep," he resumed, carefully reading her body language. "I was just trying to test something."

The white noise swelled like a zit that needed popping. The longer he left it, the more unbearable it became. The question "test what" hung in the air like a suspended guillotine blade. "I just needed to know- there were some cases that reported powers without influence. Lucas, for example. I just had to be sure."

"And?"

Ethan watched the dish towel as it screamed the answer. He didn't have to lift it in order to visualise the gash that extended along his radius: a clean, slow line, not suffering the rips and tears of eagerness or a dull blade. He made a fist just to feel it smile. "We'll need to reupholster this seat."

Mia turned into the emergency drop off and violently threw the car into park. "You've changed," she stated plainly. "I don't think you need me to tell you so."

"We both have," he replied evenly, delivering the fact as clear and evident. He popped open the car door and set one foot on the asphalt. "You coming in?"

She shook her head. "I need to find a better place to park."

"Alright," he concurred. "See you in a few."

Mia opened her hand with her palm still on the steering wheel before the car door shut with a resounding boom. She watched as he stopped over a storm drain and wrung the dish towel's dripping hem before glancing for witnesses and letting the hospital's automatic doors swallow him whole.

Mia dragged a hand down her face, then dropped it onto the gearshift. She circled the visitor's parking like a thought that circled around her head, looking for a place to stop and finding none. Aimlessly passing endless aisles until she landed in a shady space under a slab of concrete roofing. She checked her mirrors. She could have pulled in straighter. The car idled steadily and she tested the resistance of the brake with absent attention. She checked her mirrors again. It was good enough.

She reached for the ignition and unwound one more thought before twisting the key in her hand sideways. The car shuddered and died, leaving only silence and stillness behind. She looked to the empty seat beside her and the rorschach test that remained there, soaked into the cloth interior, browning at the edges..

The fantasy that she had been living in her head wavered, revealing glimpses of reality from behind the taffeta curtain she'd hung for herself. For as often as she'd just wanted to go home, to a nice house and a loving husband, the struggles of readjusting ached. It had all been so perfect, the way she had planned it in her head. The way she had tried to make those dreams happen, they had all fallen so flat. Three years had passed since the sabotage of the Annabelle. Time didn't stop after her infection prevented her from perceiving it.

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and pursed her lips to a tight seal, keeping her thoughts in the unspoken and unbreathed abstract. She was being foolish, she decided. Three years had long since passed. Neither of them were the same people they had been before. She had been attempted to resurrect something that had died a long time ago. She watched herself in the rear view with eyes that didn't smile when she let out a chuckle. _You've fallen into an old habit_, she told herself internally, _I guess you've gotten good at dealing with zombies. _The last word punctured her like a bullet; a sensation she could still easily conjure up. The sick, the unhealthy, the living dead, the haunted, now came so naturally to her. Restart. She hadn't considered the disparity of the word's meanings, nor that she and Ethan would choose definitions that were so different from one another.

Her phone buzzed so violently that it spun around in the cupholder. She jumped in her seat, first hearing the scream of a chainsaw before she saw the light of the screen. The incoming call was a number she didn't recognize. She let it go for a moment, each vibration booming through the plastic vessel, until the unbearable sound overrode her initial startle.

"Hello?"

"Hello, is this Mrs. Mia Winters?"

She cleared her throat and reentered the world outside her head. "Yes, speaking."

"Mia, this is Chris Redfield. Do you have a moment?"

"Yeah, yes." She winced at the accidental colloquialism. "I'm available now."

"Great," he spoke with a professional air that alluded to neither good nor bad news. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "I'm going to try and keep this short. Your papers came across my desk this morning."

The upwards inflection of his last sentence implied he wasn't checking for her understanding. She must have a hundred papers in her file now, and she quickly tried to recount the most important ones. She felt her voice begin to engage for a passive "uh-huh" but breathed it out silently as he continued.

"Needless to say we were surprised to see them, considering everything you had been through already."

Considering everything, the phrase hardly held meaning for her anymore. Her "everything" was an outlier that was relative to nothing. She couldn't be infected again, in fact, his language hardly sounded like it regarded her health. The anticipation made her heart feel like a washing machine.

"But, to beat the enemy, you have to understand the enemy. Your intel and experience make you a very valuable resource."

She held her breath.

"So, congratulations on your conversion," he said warmly. "Welcome to Blue Umbrella. You got the job."

Dying for an exhale, but gasping anyway, she sat up a little straighter. "I got the job?"

Chris chuckled and the sound of a turning page crackled through the phone. "You're damn near overqualified. You know The Connections and how they operate. You have all the intel on the E-series. Not to mention the fact that you applied here shows the type initiative and work ethic you have. Yeah," even he sounded relieved to be delivering good news, "you got the job."

"Wow, thank you," Mia sputtered, she put a hand to her forehead as if it would help her find the words. "Thanks so much for reaching out, I appreciate it. And the opportunity, of course, too. I really look forward to working with you."

"Same to you." He replied, then his tone shifted to one of conclusion. "That's about all I got for you today, but don't hesitate to contact us if you have questions about anything."

After a brief exchange of goodbyes, Mia plopped her phone back into the cupholder and looked at her eyes in the rear view. They were pinched into little arching sunrises, with little rays radiating out by her temples. She basked in the feeling of productivity, in turning her past into something beneficial, for herself and for the good of the many. She felt almost normal, looking her trauma in the face and converting its ugly looks into means for growth.

Then her phone buzzed again. Her feeling of triumph lingered, and she tried not to show it as she pulled around to the hospital entrance. She dragged her hand down her face again, physically pulling the soft smile from her lips as she faced the automatic double doors, where Ethan stood waiting, twenty-two neat black stitches in his arm.


	4. November

The counselling office was homely in the same way that candles smell like what their labels say. Some redolent semblance of comfort shone through the large matte green chairs and the professional bookshelves, topped with little zen gardens and potted plants. The sun shone blue with a still young morning. The counselor across from him sat cross-legged, a clipboard balanced precariously on his knee, no expression on his face. His certification hung on the wall behind him, too far away to read the name that Ethan hadn't bothered to remember anyway.

"Have you ever been to counseling before?" he asked, with a tone as plain as his face.

"I never had to," Ethan replied blandly. "I'd have preferred it stay that way. I've already had one too many people in my head, thanks."

The counselor poised his pen without looking down at the paper. "So this requirement has been a source of stress?"

Ethan shrugged. "I've had worse."

The counselor scribbled something in what sounded like a doctor's chicken scratch, then looked up at Ethan with the same plain expression that he wore before. He never spoke a question but Ethan knew what he was asking. He wouldn't answer a question without words, and met the gaze with the same aggressive neutrality he'd felt for months. The time was his to waste. Either way the counselor was getting paid with Blue Umbrella's money. A heavy silence persisted.

The counselor reviewed his note but remained unchanged. The question thickened, and the obvious answer loomed. They both knew it. The ticking of the clock beat the passage of time in labored analog clicks. The rest of the conversation would be arbitrary and predictable. What stress was worse? How did you handle it? What did you get from it? Far-fetched analogy. Attempt at relatability. How does it affect you now? How do you handle it? What do you get from it? Let's unpack that. Well-intended recommendation for a prescription. Tactic to try. See you next time.

Ethan sighed imperceptibly as his patience wilted. Even spelling out the beats in his head was exhausting. The counselor seemed unmoved. He leaned forward as if to convey a nudge. He tipped his chin down and peered at him from under clean dark eyebrows. "Will you tell me about it?"

The invitation seemed to land on the floor between their two chairs, all Ethan had to do was reach out and grab it. What stress was worse than counseling? Dulvey was a nebulous entity with no real beginning or end anymore. Dulvey was obvious. Shooting his wife before his stump arm bled out was stressful. Attending Lucas's fucking party was stressful. Retrieving the D-series arm was stressful. He hadn't considered comparing moments. He could talk about Dulvey, it was all right there in his head. But how and where to begin? "I don't know," he decided.

The counselor raised his eyebrows minutely. "If I may be so bold, Ethan, I think you do."

Ethan stared at the floor in front of the counselor's shiny brown dress shoe. No scuffs, not even the dry Texan dust tainted them. There's an indoor boy, he thought. There's a city boy who's never gone out of his comfort zone. The disparity between their experiences struck him like a bullet to the head. He almost laughed trying to picture this plain and mild yuppie going through the Baker house. He tried to picture messy red staples behind the nicely poised pen, or Jack's bootprint swelling one of his eyes shut. He wondered if he had what it took to make it out alive and left the thought with no definitive answer. Regardless, there was no way he could possibly understand. "All that Halloween shit had me on edge."

He didn't have to look up to hear the sound of another note being made. "On edge." The counselor iterated. "Tell me about that."

"I don't know." The sound of the metal ballpoint on the clipboard grated his nerves. The feeling of surveyance and close perception loomed. On edge. He held his tongue on the obvious example and focused his thoughts elsewhere. October wasn't an easy month. He drummed his fingers on the armrest of the chair and felt the stitches wriggle with the anticipation of coming out soon. "There's all those clichés and tropes out there in the horror movies. I guess I just never noticed how close they were to reality. It's weird to see, I don't know, _The Fly_ and think 'yeah that mutation is pretty accurate.' or _Carrie_ and think 'yeah, people really are unassuming about young girls but look how much fucking damage they do.' It sucks. You grow up thinking it's just fiction and it's on that side of the screen while we're not. Then you find out that's not true."

"Because of Dulvey."

"Fuck yeah, because of Dulvey."

A moment passed. The counselor only stared with the impeccable and excruciating wait time he was so keen on exercising. The clock beat the seconds. Any movement Ethan made would be recorded, not that it mattered, but his pride kept him from shaking his head, or crossing his arms, or glancing around the room. His body language would tell more than his words. He stopped drumming his fingers. He wanted to purse his lips, but didn't. Then he resumed, "you say that like there would be any other fucking reason."

The counselor scribbled something else down, then adjusted his clipboard on his knee. "I notice you're a little tense. What you went through was upsetting."

"Yeah, no shit."

He glanced to his clipboard so quickly it seemed more like a courtesy, and asked a question he already had posed in his mind. "You mentioned the feeling of someone else inside your head. What was that like for you?"

"Uh," he blew a sigh so his cheeks puffed out, and shook his head. "Not great." The inside of his mind felt like the basement, black and labyrinthine. Hard to tell what was dripping water, or footsteps, or heavy breathing. The night of the Incident was all one place in his mind. He dragged one hand along the wall trying to find the door that had the answer behind it. So many memories he had locked away, some more actively than others. "My brain doesn't let me go back there," he said distantly. "I think I blocked most of that out."

"It doesn't have to be what events you remember. Just the way you felt."

He felt his heart lurching in his chest. Running through the corridors, anticipating the bite of a chainsaw blade, falling stories at a time. Each held its own rhythm and panic. The molded staggered through the hallways of his mind, once-human and now unrecognizably overtaken. How many times he'd considered that that could have been him, if Eveline willed it. But she didn't, she wanted him in the family instead. The map in his mind was dark, but the answer was close. It hid behind the door to the processing room. The door rattled on its hinges.

"Just the way you felt," the counselor repeated quietly, with more patience in his voice than before.

"I know," Ethan almost jumped, "I'm fucking trying. Just… give me a minute."

"What was it like?" He refreshed.

The shiny brown shoes seemed to smile with a stupid naiveté. Ethan had had almost the exact same pair. But city-slicker engineer Ethan Winters was remade in Dulvey. He never knew he could run, shoot, and problem-solve as quickly and effectively as he did then. He never knew how well he could survive until he was forced to. He never knew he was capable of saving his own life, Mia's and Zoe's in the course of one night. His strength and sense of purpose got stronger with the infection, pushing through Eveline's hallucinations until their strength outweighed his. The door rattled on its hinges. The deadbolt that sealed it knocked against the frame as he hit at it with the heel of his hand.

"It's like," the door budged but not by much. He sighed impatiently through his nose at the non-answer that faced him. The way was shut. It was made by irreplicable events, never to return. "It's like you're sitting here talking to me, and then I say 'manual breathing' or 'now you're aware of your blinking' or 'swallow your own spit' but it's so much-" he clenched his fist and felt the strain of his flexed muscle against the tug of his stitches. "It's so much _worse_ than that. Because it's not breathing or blinking or swallowing, it's…" he hit against the door in his brain with one last attempt. It rattled, and that was all. Blackness faced him. Nothing more. "It's nothing I can possibly explain, or that you could possibly understand."

The counselor nodded an indication of listening and set the clipboard aside. "I think," he stated with a thoughtful pensivity, "that these memories are incredibly difficult and elusive, but altogether worth addressing. Our past experiences direct our current perspectives, so the more you acknowledge this experience, the more sense your stress, tenseness, actions and reactions, will make."

Ethan raised an eyebrow.

"Picture driving a car."

He could almost feel the sedan's interior in his palm as he nervously shifted his hands on the wheel. The texan dust melted to a lusher, greener, wet heat.

"And all of life is just driving forward, sometimes making deliberate turns and other times seeing where the road takes you."

The turn indicator blinked eagerly as he merged off the highway, where the road had wound on with a ceaseless monotony. The sway and curve of the lanes fell into a steady predictability. The farther along he drove, the fewer cars crawled along beside him. Peeling off to the exit ramp, he felt like the only car for miles, trusting the map to get him to his destination.

"But you cannot go forward without occasionally checking the rear view, where you see what's already passed and how far you've come, and what's going to inform the way you continue forward."

The car crawled cautiously over the rocks and large branches that riddled the overgrown, bushwhacked trail. He pressed the gas and pulled the car forward with a wet, organic sucking sound and continued driving until the trees got too thick and too dense to weave through.

"There's a point to which that is necessary."

He shut off the car and stepped into the dewey Louisiana air. His shiny brown dress shoes sunk a little into the wet marsh and dirt. He read over Mia's email once more despite being able to recite it word for word.

"And there's a point to which that is dangerous."

He followed the trail into the thick of the property with mutilated dolls and carrion to lead the way. A van stood derelict amongst the trees, just outside a wrought iron fence. A hand painted sign obscured the first view of the house, which smiled from beyond with twisted wooden teeth.

"So if there's a safe way you can try and bring those memories back," the counselor spoke with a deliberate and slow lilt. "I would encourage you to do so."


	5. December

Dishes clinked in the kitchen as Mia loaded the dishwasher. Christmas was a week away, but still kin and close friends stopped by to drop off gifts, stay for coffee and hors d'oeuvres, and catch up on new goings-on in their lives. Mia always explained her job vaguely to try and yield as few questions as possible. Ethan always said he was doing fine.

Ethan brought the remains of a cheese board and a bowl of gnawed olive pits over to the kitchen. He wrapped up the salvageable rinds and wedges as Mia lifted the smeared dishes from beside him and started the sink.

"You're a good hostess," he said without turning around.

The dishes rattled violently. Mia uttered a quiet "woops" to herself and click-click-clicked the dished back on top of each other. The sink ran for a few seconds, then shut off. "Sorry, what did you say?"

"I said you're a good hostess." The dishes punctuated his words with the duller thump of getting filed away on the dishwasher rack. "No one seems worried about us anymore. Not explicitly. Isn't that nice?"

Mia laughed. "They all look at me like I'm a ghost, have you noticed that? The scorn on your mom's face. I think she thought I eloped with someone else."

"Well," Ethan chuckled. "I wouldn't be surprised if she thought that. That's easier to believe than the truth."

Mia smirked and wrung a dishtowel between her hands. "Oh, would it? Sorry, I didn't think I'd have to include a line about zombie mind-control in our wedding vows." She swung the dishtowel so it thwapped his shoulder playfully and slid it back over the towel bar. "Wanna watch a movie?"

"Sure," Ethan smiled over his shoulder at her and brushed the damp crumps and pilled fuzz off his shirt. As he walked over to the den and powered on the TV, he called, "You didn't think Lucas was cute? 'Could have gone with him."

"Oh, _gag_." She laughed and the dishwasher shut with a beep, and rhythmic jolts of water began to fire.

"Jack?" he offered, "Not husband material?"

She imitated the sound of vomiting, then laughed again. "Not quite my type."

He pulled up the search bar and tabbed through Christmas movies. Every cover was a heterosexual couple wearing red and green. Some hijinks or misunderstanding implied in the title, or the setting behind them. Some promise of a happy ending, a confession of love, a coming together, all charged in the simple way they looked at each other. He tabbed to the bottom of the page and flipped to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. He took a sip of the tea he'd left on the coffee table that had been there for hours, and eventually reached the end list. "All these movies are about family," he said before Mia padded over to the den in sock feet. "Does that work for you?"

"Well," she twisted her mouth sideways, then sighed with high eyebrows. "That's the meaning of Christmas, after all."

He tabbed back to the top of the list to show her. "Elf? Family models. Home Alone? Family models. Krampus, for chrissakes. Family models. If I have to see one more advertisement about being home with family, and family-this and family-that, I think I'll go nuts." he reached the end of the list again and looked up at her.

She was quiet for a while, looking at the screen with the same twisty mouth pinched off to one side. Then she sighed through her nose and looked back to him without changing her expression. "Please don't get angry about it."

Ethan set the remote down and balanced his elbows on his knees, holding open palms out to face the ceiling. "I'm not angry, I'm just-"

"It's not a big deal," she said gently. "We can do something else."

"It's fine, I'm fine. I'm not angry, Mia. Really." Ethan pursed his lips flat and took a moment to breathe. "God," he ran a hand over his eyes, "there's so much pressure to be so damn happy during the holidays. I don't mean to be so tense."

Mia pulled her hair over one shoulder. "Yeah, I don't know if I'm in the mood to watch other people be happy in their families after cordially visiting with people I haven't seen in," she glanced to the ceiling as if it would help with her mental math. "forever. All the tense smiles and pleasantries and small talk? We've filled our quota of that today," she smiled in a mild, disarming way. "There are some, uh, gloomier movies, right?"

"I always thought It's A Wonderful Life was dark." Ethan offered, tabbing to the first page again. "Same with a Christmas Carol."

"I thought they were the same thing for years," Mia said absently, braiding her hair loosely over her shoulder as she thought of other films. "What about Die Hard?"

Ethan tipped his head. "Yeah, I could do Die Hard."

"The thing with the estranged wife won't bug you?"

"Nah. It's the best one available, anyway." He glanced over to her, then back to the screen. "Plus, it's cute when you point out that they sometimes use the wrong gunshot sounds in action movies."

She put her hands up innocently. "They do." She plopped next to him on the couch. "Ooh, and when they don't wear eyes and ears when they shoot? You know how loud that would be? You've have tinnitus within a year firing that much without plugs, _especially_ in a job that requires that regularly. I think I'm rightly bugged." She laughed with a twinge of chagrin. "Also-speaking of bugs-I think we have some under the fridge."

Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, could you pick up some ant traps from the hardware store next time you're out?"

Ethan sat up a little straighter and tried to crane his next, as if to see them in the next room. "How bad is it?"

She shrugged with a blasé lift of one shoulder. "Two? Three traps worth?"

He stood up and set the remote on Mia's knee. "I'll be right back. Hit play on the movie while I check it out."

He walked over to the fridge and surveyed it top to bottom as if he was sizing it up. The shiny steel glinted a blurry reflection of the kitchen lights, and basked in the orange glow of the remaining sunset that cut through the windows. He crouched down and shone his phone flashlight under the fridge. An old ketchup packet and a ball of purple-grey dust sat by one of the legs. Ants trodded along the grout between the tile and picked up whatever little crumbs and debris they found and carried them off into the blackness. It was hard to see exactly where. He pressed his cheek to the cold tile and angled his phone a little more, but the position was too awkward, the space was too small, and under the fridge was so dark and cobwebbed that it was impossible to make an assessment.

He got back up to his feet and brushed whatever dirt and crumbs had clung to his skin. He placed his hands on the back of the fridge and hauled it forward by one corner. The legs of the fridge ground against the tile with a cumbersome, vibrating groan. Within the fridge, something glass rocked and maybe fell over; it was hard to tell. Certainly nothing broke, but the wobbling glassware wrapped in flimsy cellophane would make a hell of a mess if he wasn't careful.

A large cockroach skittered out from under the fridge. Ethan observed it for a moment before giving the fridge one more tug. It grated across the floor again, but now the space he had created was enough for him to step into and peer behind the fridge and into the derelict corners of the kitchen.

Ants peppered the tile and grout. A little black pile of them writhed in the far corner, no bigger than a quarter, maybe, but it would take more than three traps to get rid of them all. A cockroach the size of an almond sat dumbly in the center, so still and expressionless that Ethan presumed it to be dead. The large cockroach sat by the molding that lined the floor. It darted off again at a staggering speed.

"Fuck!" Ethan started, reflexively.

"What?" Mia replied with a twinge of panic. She cleared her throat. "Is everything okay? Is it bad?"

"No, the little bastards are fast, it just surprised me," Ethan called back. "It's not _great_."

He placed his hand on the side of the fridge and felt its greasy, rather sticky layer of sludge, watching the ants squirm and undulate. He watched the white gleams on the ants and tried to determine one from the other in the impossible, moving mass. It looked as unnatural as autonomous black caviar, swirling around together. He stared into the darkness beyond them and thought he could hear the clatter of their spindly legs. He swallowed. His hand on the fridge felt hardwood now, and his back felt pressed to the wall of the crawlspace. Centipedes would rain down, and there was only one small flashlight to view them by, and he didn't know what lay beyond the tight corridor but it couldn't be worse than what he was running away from.

"Ethan? I asked you a question."

Ethan worked his hand over the greasy film on the fridge. It wasn't hardwood. He wasn't there. He rubbed his fingers together and focused on the greasy, sticky, viscous feeling, then wiped his hand on his pants. "Sorry, I was just, uhh..."

"I asked if this was bigger than a trip to the hardware store. Do you think we need an exterminator?"

He hesitated. "Do we have to call Umbrella about this?"

"Wait, what?" she paused the movie and walked over to the kitchen, leaning on the wall by the table. "What are you talking about?"

"Forget it," Ethan dismissed with a wave and a shake of his head. "Forget it, it was a force of habit. I didn't mean it."

She studied his face carefully and padded across the kitchen floor. "Ethan," she pressed her palms to his cheeks. "I know what you're thinking."

He brushed her hands away gently. "Then you're thinking it, too."

"It's not-"

"Marguerite?" their tones collided on the name.

Mia lifted her shoulders and dropped them. "It's not her."

"It's not _her_." Ethan insisted. "It's a, uh…" he wracked his brain for the word and eyed the large cockroach as it skittered to the corner of the room and out of sight. "It's a- a symptom." Mia just stared, pursed her lips, until her silence forced him to continue. "A side effect, of- all that." He tried to observe her reaction, but her expression remained unchanged.

"It's a roach infestation." She said evenly. "Not even an infestation, it's _one_ roach, and some ants. I think maybe, if it's a symptom of anything, it's of the trauma."

The word still struck him like a curse. A pang of anger punched his gut, but he kept it from leaping out his throat. When he spoke, his voice was eerie with an overcompensated calm. "You don't think that means something?"

Mia looked up at him from under her dark eyebrows. "I think it means we need to call an exterminator." She reached out again and rubbed his arms. "Or pick up some traps from the store. And maybe call your counselor? Look at you, you just about lost all the color in your face. Are you okay?"

Ethan looked at her levelly with his lips pressed together so he looked like a dog about to bark.

"Remember who I work for?" Mia said in a light, reassuring tone. "I have intel. I don't think it's worth-" she flicked a tendril of hair from her face and gestured her palm in a circle that looped Ethan and the fridge together. "Catastrophizing." She assessed his expression before continuing, "I'm noticing a pattern with you, and I'm," she glanced around like she had the word in mind, but didn't want to say it. With a bolstering inhale, she looked him in his face and said plainly. "I'm worried."

His expression softened and he shifted his weight. "You don't have to worry."

She picked some leftover dishtowel lint from off his shirt and flicked each fuzzy pill onto the tile thoughtfully. "I just want to help."

"I'm getting all the help I possibly can. I'm getting more help than I ever asked for." He reached up and took her hands from his arms and locked his fingers with hers. "I'm really tired, and I really just want this to go away so I can feel normal again, and we can feel normal again, but it doesn't work like that. I wish it did." His gaze drew back towards the ants as he pondered what to say next. A heavy feeling filled his chest like a thick fog that sunk and swirled and clouded everything up. He pictured the kneehigh grasses and weeds, seeing everything between the sights on his gun. If he looked hard enough beyond the blackness, there'd be a lantern swinging, swinging, swinging, swinging…

He snapped back to her and gave her hands another squeeze. "I really wish it did. I'll call the exterminator so they can patch the cracks in the wood where the bugs come in. You keep playing the movie and I'll join you in a second."

"Okay," she half-whispered with a soft smile. "Thanks, Ethan."

He kissed her cheek and she walked back to the den, plopping onto the couch and pulling her feet up beside her. Ethan pulled out his phone again. His flashlight was still on, and nearly blinded him as he oriented it in his hand. "Jesus," he muttered, and turned it off.

The movie began to play again. Theme music and exposition thrummed from the other room. He walked through the kitchen to the dining room to mitigate the noise pollution as he scrolled through his contacts: Peters. Perez. Pinto. Poole. Pool Service. Quest Diagnostics. Rabinstein. Ramos. Redfield.

The little blue speech bubble tempted him. He tapped on it and the blank message format popped up. It's better to keep him informed, right? He said if anything seems suspicious, even a roach infestation, to reach out. The bar blinked at him, waiting for text to be entered.

No, it was ridiculous. Mia was right about his patterns and paranoia. August seemed ages away, and there were no major updates from Blue Umbrella or Dulvey. Both Ethan and Mia were making remarkable progress with their counselors, and all their tests had come back with satisfactory results. Plus, Mia was with Blue Umbrella now. She had intel, and insights, and they both vowed to have transparent communication and full honesty with each other. He trusted her. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he repeated the thought in his mind, picturing what his counselor might say to this conscious revelation. (What's that like for you? How does it feel to acknowledge that sense of trust? Where do you feel that in your body? That's very good, Ethan.)

Ethan cancelled the blank text, scrolled a little further, and tapped the blue phone icon. The phone rang twice before a gruff voice stiffly recited: "Redford and Sons Pest Control, how may I help you?"

"Hi," Ethan started, feeling a little stiffness in his cheeks. He put his hand up to feel them, poking with three fingertips from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. A divot in his cheek revealed a dimple, and clinging to the corner of his lips was a small, but genuine, smile. "Uhm, my name is Ethan Winters, I'm calling to consult about an ant problem."

A real smile. He felt it over and over. A real smile beyond the pleasantries and small talk and courtesy. Since the counseling and the various medications he'd been prescribed, he could count on one hand how many times he'd _really_ smiled. The smile spread. It was because of her, and it was for her. Once he got off the phone, he decided, he'd go back to the family room and put his arm around her and wrap her all up like they were honeymooning again.


End file.
